I feel for any parent trying to raise a child in today's society with the people deemed celebrities by the media. Throughout this weekend, there has been a smelly load of news coverage by the Star and the local TV stations of Kim Kardashian's participation in the Indianapolis 500 festivities this weekend. Kardashian is famous for making a XXX home video with her former boyfriend, Ray J, a wannabe R&B singer, which myteriously fell into the hands of Vivid Entertainment and instantly shot across the Internet for the viewing pleasure of voyeurs worldwide. The "unauthorized" publication of the video won her a cool $5 million. Her sex video helped launch the reality show she does with her sisters, mother and step-father, former Olympic star Bruce Jenner, who has to be the poorest excuse for a step-father to ever walk the face of the earth, and who looks even creepier than Michael Jackson looked after having so much plastic surgery work on his face.
The other night I was channel surfing when I came upon one of the "serious news shows" having a sit-down interview with Kim and her mommy. The mommy talked about how proud she was of her daughter and the success she's enjoining from many new business ventures. It seems your daughters are snapping up perfume and other products bearing her name in hopes of being just like Kim. The interviewer, referencing the sex tape, asked mommy if she didn't have a problem with some of the attention her daughter had gotten. Without batting an eye, mommy said she and her daughters were good at making lemonade out of lemons. The sex tape led to an opportunity to do a spread for Playboy, a deal which mommy proudly said she landed for her daughter and which paid very well. The interviewer wondered what her late father, Robert Kadashian, would think of all of this. He would be so proud mommy Kardashian said because Kim and her daughters were such successful entrepreneurs.
The father, you may recall, was one of O.J. Simpson's best friends who had a law degree but hadn't practiced law for several years and had allowed his law license to lapse when O.J. decided to slay his ex-wife, Nicole, and a helpful male friend who he mistook as a new lover with a knife. Daddy Kardashian carried away the garment bag that O.J. had taken with him on his last-minute trip to Chicago after the killings. Daddy decided to renew his law license and sat through the one-year trial of his best friend without actually doing any legal work other than to protect the confidentiality of any conversations he had with O.J. after the killings. Hey, it got his picture on TV every day if nothing else. When the dumbest jury ever assembled returned a not guilty verdict, nobody showed a look of disbelief more than Daddy Kardashian, who decided he no longer wanted to be O.J.'s best friend after he became a free man. He later died of throat cancer undoubtedly brought on by the guilt of holding back the truth. Would it be possible for the news media in this country just to pretend that Kim Kardashian and her ilk no longer exist?
5 comments:
I'm so glad I didn't turn on the TV this weekend. I'm also glad I don't subscribe to cable or the paper.
So agree. Ugh, ugh, ugh!
Would it be possible? That might require covering real issues with real journalism. After a few generations of societal decline (some might include "morality"), how are we to put the genie back in the bottle?
It's not as simple as wishing we could return to mainstream media covering both sides of the issues. If our populace continues to care more and more about short-term gratification for one's self than any attempt to think long-term about anything of substance, China and other countries with broader history and outlook will indeed pick at our bones.
It's dismal that so soon after the malarky of the Bush 'Compassionate Conservatism', that it's a step-up to hope a wave of religiously conservative judicial candidates are successful in California. If only this stuff were confined to California....
Celebrity has often come to those who deserve it less than others. Even in electoral politics we see where nice hair and teeth and well chosen sound bites will get someone farther than actually knowing what the heck they are talking about.
We no longer seem to celebrate inventions, innovation or great works of art and music. Although, I wonder if we ever did except when looking into the past.
Somewhere in a couple of laboratories are people who came up with some great medicines or cures for bad diseases - we don't know their names but we know Paris Hilton and the Kardashian clan.
I like to think more people know who John Williams, Danny Elfman or James Horner are than probably do. Or people like the recently departed Frank Frazetta.
The mass media, including their news organizations, are as much a part of the corporatocracy (locally known as public-private partnerships) that is intent on distracting us, with talking points, wedge issues, celebrity nonsense and anti-intellectual garbage.
While are IQ's are dropping, the politicians, in league with their corporate brethren, whom they report to, are robbing us blind in every way imaginable
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